


Just Like Muscle Memory

by cablesscutie



Series: Ridiculous Sentence Drabbles [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Frottage, Handcuffs, M/M, Oral Sex, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, mentions of human experimentation, spoon feeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 07:14:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4657425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cablesscutie/pseuds/cablesscutie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Bucky was turned into the Winter Soldier when he was first captured.  His first mission was to kill Dr. Erskine and steal all of the notes and serum samples he could find.  His second was to capture all of the prospective subjects for Project Rebirth so Zola could further investigate Erskine’s notes and continue his own experiments.  Even though the Soldier was wiped, he takes a liking to still-skinny!Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like Muscle Memory

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Just a heads-up: since Bucky is the Winter Soldier, he does not know Steve as anything but one of the prospects from Project Rebirth, and he doesn't know his real name, so he refers to both of them as the Subject and the Soldier. This is in no way meant to be dehumanizing to Steve or indicate a lack of consent on Bucky's part later on in the fic.
> 
> 2\. This is technically part of the Ridiculous Sentence Drabbles series because the first line was inspired by this post: http://toxixpumpkin.tumblr.com/post/108022477839/ridiculous-sentence-prompts However, it did not want to turn out as silly and fluffy (and SHORT) as these were supposed to be.

“Stop petting the test subjects,” Dr. Zola admonished. The Soldier froze, but didn’t remove his fingers from where they were tangled around strands of soft, blonde hair. The subject in question was a scrawny little man with a ribcage that looked better suited for a sparrow and a scowl etched deep on his brow. His wrists had been handcuffed, but the bones were so thin that the cuffs could’ve fallen right off if his hands weren’t so disproportionately large. He must’ve been mouthing off at the guards because he’d been brought in gagged, a non-standard procedure for most prisoners.

“I don’t want to,” the Soldier told him, beginning to card his fingers through the man’s hair once more.

“They are not toys.”

“I don’t care about the others.”

“You shouldn’t care about _any_ of them. Only the next mission. That is all there is.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what? I am merely trying to help you remember your purpose. You are here to be the new fist of Hydra.” The Subject’s breath caught in his throat, eyes widening. Zola gestured to his startled expression. “See? He is afraid. Fear is an immensely powerful emotion, Soldat. With your help, we shall spread the fear of Hydra all over the world, and achieve unimaginable power. That is why we must all forsake certain...smaller pleasures,” he finished, eyes landing on the Subject, who was still sitting at the Soldier’s feet, but now shaking, rage burning in his eyes.

“Bullshit,” the Soldier spat. Zola was startled into dropping the pen he had been holding.

“E-excuse me?”

“I said bullshit,” the Soldier repeated, meeting Zola’s eyes defiantly. “You just don’t want to deal with me being pissed when you kill him.”

“Who said -”

“No one said. They didn’t have to. I’m not stupid. You take a new subject into your lab and they don’t come out. Just like the ones before me -” the Soldier cut off abruptly, looking down again and scowling, confused. He’d never had any recollection of _before_. Of course he had known there had to have been something to his life before Hydra. He had to have been born somewhere, grown up somehow, but there had never been any memories of it, and after a while he accepted it. Maybe that’s just how it was for everyone.

You were who you were, and there was no sense in going back. It was horribly inefficient.

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Shut up.” The Soldier’s head hurt now. He had to let go of the Subject’s hair to rest his aching forehead against cool palms. The heels of his hands pressed against his eyes, and it helped to dull the pain, however minutely.

“Perhaps I should arrange for a sedative to be brought -”

“No! No,” he repeated, calmer. “It’s an annoyance. It will resolve itself.”

“Then be quiet and leave me to my work.”

“Promise you won’t hurt him.”

“He is a test subject, Soldat. Should I check your pockets to make sure you haven’t smuggled any of the rats out as well?”

“Don’t talk about him like that.” Zola yanked the goggles off again and turned to the Soldier. He gestured to the Subject, who was now seething as he stared up at the two of them, watching the argument intently.

“For Christ’s sake, look at him! He is an invalid. I am doing him a favor. At worst, we are putting him out of his misery.” The Subject made an indignant sound around the gag, and the plates in the Soldier’s arm whirred as they shifted. He rose slowly from his chair and closed the space between himself and Zola in two long strides, planting his feet firmly and looming tall and dark and wild as a tornado.

“What the fuck did you just call him?” the Soldier growled. Zola reached under the lab table, finger hovering over the small red panic button. The Soldier’s eyes tracked the movement.

“Stand down, Soldat,” Zola warned. His voice trembled; terrified, but the Soldier knew that the threat was in no way empty. He’d pushed the limits before. The consequences were one of the only memories that survived the chair. He obeyed, returning to his seat, but still insisting on petting the Subject’s hair, gaze unwavering as he silently dared Zola to contest him again.

Later that night, there was a mysterious accident in the lab - a simple mistake anyone could’ve made, really. The door on the serum’s cooling chamber was left just slightly ajar, and the whole batch was ruined, forcing Dr. Zola to begin from scratch. Coincidentally, the Subject was not selected for the next trial run. The man who was tested in his place didn’t survive.

* * *

 

For several more months, Zola’s fear of retribution kept the Subject out of testing. He was cruel and a coward, but not stupid. He’d known exactly why the serum had been compromised, but the Soldier was too well-trained to leave the evidence required to prove it. Apart from monitoring his health, the Subject did not enter the lab, and when he did, the Soldier was never far behind, drifting into the room and standing sentry just an arm’s reach away. There was no subtlety about his protectiveness. Every inch of him bore aggression and suspicion.

In turn, the Soldier was the only one that the Subject didn’t resist. He would fight tooth and nail against every command, even refusing meals simply on the principle that the guards were the ones providing them. He was unhealthily thin as it was, and Zola could not afford to lose any “artifacts” from Erskine’s lab until they had been “properly investigated.” The technicians shoved a tube down the Subject’s throat and force fed him, but they weren’t able to prevent him from throwing it all up again in protest. On the technicians if they were stupid enough to stay close.

Eventually, the Soldier was ordered to make him obey by any means necessary. The command was given to him along with a bowl of plain oatmeal, and the guards outside fixed him with smiles that were a horrid mix of excited and sadistic. Everyone on the base surely expected the Soldier to be violent with the Subject. The Soldier would’ve expected such behavior from himself as well, had it been anyone else. But the Subject seemed to affect him differently. The only anger the Soldier felt around him was on the Subject’s behalf.

When the door clanged shut behind him and the lock ground back into place, the Soldier observed his...mission? Charge? What were they to each other? Surely not friends, there were no _friends_ in Hydra. The Subject sat on the floor, back facing the door. It was a position vulnerable to attack. Very unwise, but it seemed that the intended message was that he wasn’t waiting for anyone. He was shunning the guards and the scientists that held him captive. The Soldier also noted that it was the first time he had met the Subject when he was not gagged, though his hands were still cuffed.

“Get outta’ here,” the Subject told him. The voice that rumbled through the room was too deep to have possibly come from someone that small. “I don’t want nothin’ you bastards give me.” Upon further consideration, the Soldier found himself thinking that the sound fit. Size was never a good indicator when it came to this one; he always managed to act bigger than he stood.

“I have orders to make sure you eat,” the Soldier informed him. “By any means necessary.” He couldn’t say why repeating those parameters bothered him, but his stomach churned with something like fear at the thought of fighting this tiny little man. The Soldier had no reasons, but he was positive that it had nothing to do with thinking the Subject would be anywhere close to a physical match for him. At the sound of the Soldier’s voice, the Subject’s head whipped around, eyes wide. The smile that lit his face was the brightest thing the Soldier could ever remember seeing. It was like sunlight on fresh snow, and all the shadows in the room seemed to shrink back.

“Bucky! Thank God.” The Subject scrambled to his feet to close the distance between himself and the Soldier. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for ages, but they kept gagging me up every time they let me outside. Guess I really do shoot my mouth off too much. How’d you get in here anyway? Why aren’t you locked up? Are you a _spy_ now? How come you never told me about that! I mean, honestly, what’s a few classified government secrets between friends? And speaking of stuff you didn’t tell me, what the _fuck_ happened to your arm?” The soldier blinked at him in shock. He opened his mouth a couple of times, succeeding in doing nothing more than gaping at the Subject until he finally processed the barrage of questions enough to ask one himself:

“Who the hell is Bucky?” The Subject rolled his eyes.

“This like when you were thirteen and decided you were a _man now_ and _Bucky’s a dumb kid’s name_ and _it’s James now?_ ” The Subject puffed out his slender chest, and he very much resembled a young boy playing at being grownup, but the Soldier still had no idea what he was talking about. “Or are you just fucking with me?” Well, it was neither. He wasn’t Bucky, but he didn’t know how to explain that to this man who was obviously so deeply convinced that he knew the Soldier.

“Uh...you n-need to eat this,” the Soldier told him, holding out the bowl of oatmeal. The Subject cocked his head and regarded him with bemusement, rattling the chains on the cuffs behind his back.

“Unless you have a key, I’m gonna need a little assistance here.”

“Oh. Sorry, sorry. I guess I’ll just…” the Soldier picked up the spoon shoved into the lumpy, beige slop and scooped out a reasonable sized bite. Even as he was holding it out to the Subject, he questioned his actions. _Spoon feeding? Apologizing? Stuttering? That’s not what the Winter Soldier_ does. The Subject’s lips closed around the spoon, and this was way easier than it should be. It was all too strange and he expected some kind of a trap, but the Subject just kept obediently accepting the food, swallowing it down and licking the spoon clean. He watched the Soldier intently, with heat in his gaze, but no malice. It was an unfamiliar expression, even more disquieting than if the Subject had looked at him with reproach. He found himself fascinated by the motion of the Subject’s mouth and throat working; pink, soft-looking lips wet with spit, the glide of a tongue over the metal of the spoon, and an image of that tongue licking at the plates of his fingers flashed in his mind’s eye. The Subject swallowed, and the Soldier wanted to feel the bob of his Adam’s apple under his fingers, or maybe against his lips…

His gaze kept sweeping downwards, and the slight peek of the Subject’s collarbones made him want to _bite_ and _suck_ and _mark him all up, make him mine, he_ is _mine_ , the Soldier thought. His skin felt too hot, and he could feel his cock start to press against the fabric of his boxers and tactical pants. A quick assessment of himself provided a name for the feeling: “arousal.” The Soldier had no way of verifying this, but knew it must be more information he had from before. The Subject noticed the Soldier’s reaction and smirked.

“Enjoying the show, Buck?” he teased. The Subject’s voice was low and familiar, speaking to the Soldier as though they knew one another very well. He knew next to nothing about the Subject, but in his gut, he felt like the one misunderstanding their relationship. Maybe the Subject was part of _before_ as well.

“Whoever you think I am, I’m not him,” the Soldier said, setting aside the emptied bowl. “I...I don’t really remember my life before Hydra,” he admitted. “They pulled the old guy out and now I’m here, and I know you,” he told the Subject, frustration at his own lack of understanding welling up and making him rake his fingers through the long strands of his hair. “You’re familiar, I know, but I have no clue who the hell you are. Do you get it?”

“You’re serious?” The Subject’s skin grew impossibly paler, almost gray. The Soldier nodded.

“When they prep me for missions...there’s this chair. It...it takes away my conscience, my last mission, so that I don’t have nightmares or...hesitations.”

“Is it permanent?” the Subject asks, strangled and desperate. The Soldier wants, irrationally, to comfort him.

“I don’t think so. Not completely anyway. Sometimes things can come back, if a little fuzzy. Hearing a song, or having a conversation...That’s why they don’t let me out of the labs. Whenever I get too close to the regular foot soldiers, my programing starts to break down and they have to fix me.” The Subject stepped closer.

“Do you think maybe _feeling_ something again could help?”

“I don’t know.” The Subject looked up at him from under long, dark lashes, and the Soldier felt a spark of heat race down his spine.

“Worth a shot, don’tcha think?” His hands were still bound behind him in the cuffs, but the Subject rose on tiptoe and pressed his lips to the Soldier’s ear. “Bet I can get you calling my name whether you know it or not,” he murmured, dragging the curve of his smile down the Soldier’s jaw, slipping down to kiss sloppily at his neck. The Soldier gasped at the sharp pain of a bite, and his exhale trembled as the spot was soothed with the swipe of a tongue.

The Subject kept teasing at the bits of exposed skin he could reach, and the Soldier’s right hand reached to tangle itself in familiar blond hair, tilting that sweet face up where he could angle for a proper kiss. It was surprisingly tender, the Soldier’s body responding gently to the Subject on instinct. Their mouths slotted together, open but unhurried, lazily tasting each other as the air around them lost the chill ever-present in the Hydra base.

After another string of kisses was trailed down the Soldier’s neck. The Subject locked eyes with him, pupils blown wide and breathing heavy, but not wheezing for the moment. He held the Soldier’s gaze as he sank smoothly to his knees. "Drop your drawers," he prompted, nodding at the Soldier's crotch where the impatient line of his erection was clearly visible. The Soldier did as he was told, pushing his pants and underwear down his muscular thighs and freeing his cock. A blush crept up the back of his neck as the Subject studied him, stripping away so much more than clothing. "You can come when you remember my name. Not a moment sooner," the Subject ordered and before the Soldier could nod his agreement, the Subject nosed around the base of the Soldier's cock, nuzzling the thin skin over his hip bones sweetly and drawing a gasp at the graze of teeth. The Subject's tongue swirled around the tip, rough and wet.

"Christ," the Soldier moaned, reaching down to tangle his flesh fingers in straw blonde hair.

"I appreciate the compliment," the Subject teased, "but you're still wrong." He leaned back in for another lick, tracing the vein that ran along the underside, before taking the first half of the Soldier's cock into his mouth. The warmth and wetness was heaven, sparks dancing along his spine. He groaned, and the sound echoed back off the concrete walls, wanton and unhinged even to his own ears. A low chuckle from the Subject vibrated up his shaft and through his whole body, and the groan pitched up into a whine. He looked down to where the Subject knelt, lips wet and red, cheeks flushed so prettily, his eyebrows raised in an expression far too smug for someone with a dick in their mouth.

"God, baby," the Soldier panted, head falling back against the wall. "The way you look right now, l swear..." The words trailed off as the Subject hollowed his cheeks and took the Soldier deeper. As the Subject continued to suck him off, deep and sloppy wet, the Soldier let his mind go blank, terms of endearment dripping from his lips without conscious thought. "Oh, sweetheart, that's so good. Feels so good. Don't stop now, doll." His fingers tightened in the Subject's hair as he felt heat pooling at the base of his spine, and a muffled whine sounded in response.

The Soldier found himself cold and exposed as the Subject’s mouth pulled away with a pop. The blue of the Subject’s eyes was almost completely swallowed up by black pupils. His thin chest heaved as he panted, hot breath puffing against the cooling saliva on the Soldier’s cock and making him painfully aware of how needy he was.

“Still haven’t remembered my name,” the Subject reminded him. A mischievous light flashed in his eyes. “But I know yours. James Buchanan Barnes. I’ve got your name and number. Which means…” The Subject trailed off, shuffling closer to the Soldier, crowding him up against the cell wall, even from down on his knobby little knees. He leaned in close, and the Soldier pleaded with a God he didn’t quite believe in that the Subject was about to let the game go and just bring back that pretty little mouth of his.

Instead, the Subject told him, “I don’t have to wait,” and rolled his slim hips, pressing his erection against the Soldier’s shin, and letting out a shaky moan at the relief the pressure gave. It took a few more brushes before the Soldier -James, the subject seemed awfully certain about that, so he supposed he believed it now- figured out what the Subject meant. Forehead pressed to James’s hipbone, fully clothed and hands cuffed, the Subject continued to rub off against James’s leg. It was another form of torment in and of itself; not only being forced to watch the Subject get off before him, but to be driven wild by the sounds he made, gasping and crying out softly as he came, hips stuttering to a standstill.

The Subject moved back, raising his head to look at James, who was staring at him, slack-jawed.

“You like that?” The Subject asked, smirk twisting his red bitten lips. James nodded. “I figured. You always did like hearing me in bed. I like hearing you too. ‘Specially when you call out my name.” Without preamble, the Subject took James’s cock back into his mouth, so deep that the sensitive tip brushed the back of his throat, and James was back to dangling on the precipice of an orgasm, holding himself off according to orders, but only just. He was James Barnes, Bucky, the nickname so fond and intimate, and Bucky Barnes knew this man. Knew every inch of his skin and every drop of blood in his veins. His body remembered, but his brain just couldn’t produce the name. He needed it - needed it so goddamn bad it _hurt_ , and he was babbling now,

" _Oh god, oh god,_ Christ, _so good_ ,” begging to come _“Please, please, please, I gotta, I can’t-_ ” but there was nothingnothingnothing and he was desperate, his cock aching and leaking in the Subject’s mouth and

“C’mon, kitten, please please let me come. I’ll do anything else, I just can’t - _Stevie_ , God, please.” And he could feel the name sink into place, flashes of pale skin and sweet sounds, the taste of whisky on someone else’s tongue, graphite smudges on his skin, and then the Subject, Stevie, _his Stevie_ , was swallowing around him, muscles of his throat contracting, and that was all the permission he needed to come hot and thick down his Stevie’s throat.

He came down exhausted and sweaty, but loose and happy in a way that had never belonged to him as the Soldier. Bucky Barnes sank down the cinder block wall to sit across from Steve Rogers, who watched him with such relief in his eyes.

“Bucky?” Steve asked cautiously, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. Or at least, it mostly is. It will be.”

“Thank God,” Steve choked out, and then Bucky had an armful of skinny limbs scrambling into his lap and hugging him tight. “I knew you had to be in there, I knew it. I knew you’d come find me, you always do.”

“Of course,” Bucky murmured, burying his face in the soft skin of Steve’s neck, squeezing him back. “But I mean, you had ‘em on the ropes anyway, right?” Steve laughed wetly.

“Right.” They held each other for a moment while Bucky caught his breath, but as he calmed down, he began to feel the cold floor again, and was reminded of where they were.

“Steve, we gotta go,” he said, carefully disentangling himself and doing up his pants again.

“How? There’s guards everywhere.” Bucky pulled his pistol and offered the handle to Steve.

“If you gotta shoot, flip the safety off here,” he instructed, pointing to the small switch. “But for Christ’s sake, try not to have to. Just follow my lead, alright?” he tucked the pistol into the waistband of Steve’s pants. Steve nodded, and Bucky gripped the chain of the handcuffs with his metal fingers until it snapped. He held the two ends together in his hand to conceal the break and nudged Steve towards the door. “Fuck the future,” he said, reaching for the handle. “I just wanna go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is much appreciated! If you have any thoughts you would like to share (any at all, seriously) just post a comment- I'd love to hear from you. Or, you can come join me on tumblr as latticeontop!


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